THE MISSING WILL.

MR. FRANKLIN was a solicitor in good practice at the West End of London, having offices at —— Chambers, Regent Street, and a private residence near Fulham. He was a man of somewhat peculiar habits, although very shrewd, able in his profession, and generous towards his friends—who were not a few. His domestic life had been far from comfortable. He had been separated from his wife, through incompatibility of temper; and that lady, with one of her children, lived in a distant part of the metropolis, upon a liberal allowance from his purse.

This description will cover the life and pursuits of Mr. Franklin during a series of about fifteen years. All this while, and probably much earlier than the beginning of this epoch, he saved a considerable portion of his earnings, and invested it with that success a prudent lawyer was able to command. He was not, it is true, what is called a speculative or “enterprising” man. He was rather a plodding or hard-working man. He had a notion that lawyers ought not to engage in risks, lest they should be tempted, in the frenzy of greed, or to cover some unusual loss, to use the money which clients might by necessity or choice leave in their hands. He never made “lumps of money,” but grew rich by slow degrees, as the accumulated instalments of his frugality were piled on each other, and as the usufruct thereof, year by year, swelled the total of his husbanded gains.

At the head of his staff or firm was a managing clerk; and at the top of his rather small establishment in the country was a housekeeper. In both these persons Mr. Franklin had the utmost confidence. That comfortable feeling, I suppose, grew out of long experience; but it was not one I found it possible to share on my first introduction to these worthy persons. The clerk exhibited all the salient features of his calling. He was cunning, reticent, and conceited. I dare say he was faithful to his master. Fidelity is a peculiar merit of the attorney’s clerk. I have known many in my time, but never knew one treacherous to his master; and never heard, on reliable authority, of one who betrayed a client’s secret. I have often had occasion to know that bribes have been offered to the wretched copyist, whose earnings have probably not averaged a pound per week; and to office-lads, whose wages were but a few shillings—bribes equal to at least a quarter’s honest income—but not a secret could be extracted in this mode. I have often mused on this phenomenon, but never could fully understand the exact relation between the cause and the effect. The reader is perhaps a better psychologist than I am, and can explain it. I leave the fact in his hands, or head—merely vouching for it as a fact. As I have said, there was this faithful clerk at the head of the staff in Mr. Franklin’s office.

The housekeeper who presided over the domestic economy of the lawyer’s dwelling was a very ordinary sort of person. She was somewhere about forty-eight or fifty years of age. She was rather tall, and somewhat bulky in form. Her features were a little harsh, her voice was not one that could be described as musical, and her manners were not of that order denominated ladylike. She also was a faithful servant—or at least she very often told me so, and I have no evidence to the contrary. She declared to me, soon after my introduction to her, that she had never robbed the good man (that is, her then late master) of a penny. She had always laid out his money to the best advantage, never got a commission from the tradesmen who supplied butter, cheese, eggs, or other comestibles; and, in fact, never plundered him after the manner of her sisterhood. She was in fact—I take it for granted, and ask the reader to assume—a model housekeeper.

This is a censorious and scandalmongering age. I cannot, I fear, rely upon it that my pages may not fall into the hands of some one or two persons always ready to suspect and say ill of their neighbours. Let me, therefore, at once clearly and emphatically state, that no relationship whatever subsisted between Mr. Franklin and this lady but the ostensible one of master and servant. On this head there ought to be no doubt.

Mr. Franklin one day, after a short illness, died.

The fact of his death was almost immediately communicated to his relatives and friends, who mingled a few natural and conventional tears over his dead body, which, in due course, was interred, without needless pomp or ceremony, in a churchyard not far off.

After and before the funeral much surprise was expressed at the non-discovery of a will.

Had he made a will, or had he died intestate? On that head there was much speculation, and many decided opinions formed. Some folks argued that it was very foolish for a lawyer, above all men in the world, to leave his intentions undisclosed, and bequeath a negative legacy of trouble, distrust, suspicion, heart-burning, and social war among his acquaintances and kindred. They didn’t think he could do it. Others contended that there was nothing remarkable in a solicitor’s not making a will. These persons may be divided into two classes. One lot cynically remarked that shoemakers’ children were usually worse shod than other brats; that the offspring of tailors were to be usually known by the seediness of their costume; that publicans never drank the liquors they vended; that parsons rarely illustrated, by their practice the virtues they taught in their pulpits; and that a lawyer should betray a crowning want of prudence was not, therefore, wonderful. This was the reasoning by which some were led up to the belief that Mr. Franklin had certainly not made a will. Another lot sneered at this circumlocutory and unsatisfactory process of argument. They said that the thing was plain enough. The deceased was a lawyer. He well knew, and was satisfied with, the arrangements made by the wisdom of the legislature for the distribution of the personal estate of intestates. Against all this speculation there was, however, the unswerving and oft-repeated declarations of the managing clerk, who said that his late master did, about two years before his death, make a will. The draft thereof was in the handwriting of Mr. Franklin. He had also engrossed or copied it for the executors with his own right hand. The attestation had, however, been made by that faithful clerk and by “that rascal Edwards,” a junior clerk, whose skill in the imitation of autographs had secured him gratuitous and comfortable board and lodging at Portland.

If the deceased made a will, where could it be? That was a knotty and interesting question. In its solution nobody took a deeper interest than the housekeeper. If it could be found, it would. She was as sure as of the fact of her existence (and of this, as she had never heard the Berkleyian theory propounded, she had not the slightest shadow of a doubt), that it would secure her the reward of long and meritorious servitude. The relatives and friends, who desired to find a will, and thought she might aid in its discovery, promised to reward her if her faith were not justified by the document when it turned up. The clerk was also zealous in searching for it every where that his sagacity pointed out as its probable lurking-place. Neither will nor draft of a will could, however, be found. The office and the house were ransacked. The safe, all the tin cases, drawers, and bundles of papers, were critically examined without success. Suspicion, it is needless to say, was rife. It must have been destroyed, was the conclusion almost uniformly arrived at; and the delinquent was marked out by the imagination of several.

The lawyer’s only son, who had been a riotous youth, and a sore trouble to his father, was the suspected criminal. It was notorious that this young man had drawn heavily upon his parent from time to time. He did not like the honourable profession of the law, and, in order to accommodate his taste, Mr. Franklin had paid considerable premiums to men of repute in other professions; but the student, or apprentice, forfeited the money thus paid at different times for his benefit. He had twice robbed his father of large amounts. The lawyer’s patience and affection had apparently been exhausted some time before his death. The son, deprived of all allowance by which to sustain an idle life, was ultimately compelled to gain his living in a comparatively humble position, and when the father died he was earning a pound a week in a merchant’s counting-house. Mr. Franklin, junior, who lodged with his mother, heard of his loss as soon as that lady did. He at once threw up his engagement, under the vague belief that a fortune had been dropped into his lap. He practically took possession of the offices and the house of the deceased, and had abundant opportunities of getting rid of any document obnoxious to his interests. Uncharitable rumour, therefore, set down as fact that this young man, had ascertained that an indignant parent had cut him off with or without the proverbial shilling; that the missing will was the instrument by which his just punishment had been effected; that he had discovered the will, and in it his fate; and that, in order to get the benefit of the statutable distribution of the estate, he had destroyed both the document and the draft thereof.

About a fortnight after Mr. Franklin’s death I was instructed to probe the mystery of this lost will. It was chiefly desired that I should find the will itself; but that was thought a hopeless task. The next thing desired was, that I should get clear evidence of its former existence, its provisions, and bequests. It was also desired that I should get evidence enough to sustain a prosecution against the young man.

My task, which appeared almost hopeless, and not likely to be profitable, turned out short, easy, and satisfactory.

A brief investigation of overlooked circumstances informed me that Mr. Franklin had “protected” a young woman, who, in consequence thereof, bore him two children. This attachment he had managed to conceal from all his friends and acquaintances; and some of them were greatly scandalised at the discovery of such an offence against social morals. I called on this lady, and in my first interview went right through the mystery of the will’s concealment. The poor creature was awfully embarrassed by my inquiries, and immediately I thought it wise to let her know the real object of my visit, she fancied herself a delinquent. “Upon my word, sir,” she said, “I didn’t take it. He gave it me. He told me to keep it until he died, that it would be my only protection after his death, and that I was only to give it up to Mr. Thistlethwayte.” I saw the whole design of the late Mr. Franklin. I asked her to let me see it. She replied by an entreaty that I would not take it from her, for she asked, “What will become of me and my dear children if I lose it?” It was plain that the unsophisticated woman knew nothing of legal formalities, and hugged the paper as though its mere possession would obtain the money it set apart for her. I promised her that I would not deprive her of it; that I would certainly aid, rather than frustrate, the intentions of the father of her children. Of its contents she could know nothing beyond the general statement of the deceased—that all her future protection was bound up in its provisions. The will had been handed to her in a closed envelope. The wax was unbroken when she laid the packet before me.

How to act did not require a moment’s consideration on my part. It was not my duty, and it was repugnant to my feelings, to place this young woman at a disadvantage. In finding the will I had done more than was hoped for, and all that could be expected from me. I advised her at once to consult a respectable solicitor; and she went with me to the office of a gentleman in the neighbourhood—a total stranger to me, except by reputation.

The erring son of the deceased was cleared from suspicion; the will was proved at Doctor’s Commons, and the intentions of the testator were faithfully carried out.

One of the persons largely interested in the residuary estate of the deceased, which formed its bulk, was much grieved because of the depositary chosen by Mr. Franklin for the safe custody of his will. “It is not,” said this person, “as if he had left the creature a large sum of money. I don’t complain of the provision he has made for the unfortunate children, but he might have spared us the humiliation of asking her for the will. Why could he not have left that in the custody of some one of the respectable people to whom he has given the principal part of his fortune?”

The explanation was, “Why, don’t you see, my dear madam, that although the creature had but a small interest in the estate, that interest depended entirely upon the preservation of the document. As the bulk of the property was distributed by the testator nearly the same as the law would of itself have distributed it, he had small occasion to make a will at all, except to provide for the creature and her offspring. He chose the safest of all places in which he could deposit it, as of course he did not wish it destroyed by any of those respectable people, who would not have been much concerned if the mother and her little ones had been left absolute paupers.”

“Do you mean to suggest that either of us would have destroyed the document?”

“Certainly not; but I apprehend that the deceased thought it quite as well to preserve you all from temptation.”